News Segment

TIME RUNNING OUT ON HENDRIX BOYHOOD HOME:

August 20, 2005

SEATTLE – Time is running short for a group hoping to make the boyhood home of Jimi Hendrix the centerpiece of a community music center.

On Thursday, King County Superior Court Judge Palmer Robinson refused to extend a temporary restraining order that barred the city from demolishing the modest two-bedroom house.

However, Robinson said she thought the effort to preserve the house was worthwhile and gave the owners until Sept. 1 to seek emergency relief from the state Court of Appeals.

Four years ago the James Marshall Hendrix Foundation, headed by Peter Sikov, paid more than $30,000 to buy the house where the late guitar legend lived during 1953-56, move it to a city-owned lot and lease the site as temporary storage.

“We have people who are willing to chain themselves to that house to prevent them from tearing it down if we have to,” said Henry Lewis, a longtime friend of the Hendrix family.

Sikov and others in the foundation say city officials have repeatedly broken promises to work with them on plans to renovate the house for use in a community center that would offer music lessons, practice rooms and a lending library of musical instruments.

City officials say Sikov and the foundation have missed every deadline to either move the house or submit development plans for the project. Last year the city moved to reclaim the lot and to have the house moved again or demolished.

Hendrix foundation lawyer B. Bradford Kogut said in court Thursday that officials in suburban Renton, where Hendrix is buried, have agreed to allow the home to be moved to property there, adding that formal approval is likely around Aug. 31.

Courtesy of www.ap.org